Posts Tagged ‘books’

24 June to 9 July is the London Pride Festival. We’ve posted on our Virtual Learning Environment the listing of events running around the capital during the festival. Some are ticketed and priced whereas others are free. The festival culminates in the Pride Parade on Saturday 8 July which starts north of Oxford Circus at 1300 and ends in Whitehall around 1630. There is music in Trafalgar Square after the event.

if you miss the parade or you would like to celebrate further then Sunday 9 July offers Pride in the Park organised with UK Black Pride in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. This event includes a dog show, baking competition, stalls, music, speakers and a chance to drag up in the drag booth. Discover the stage running order on the Pride in the Park Schedule.

The National Theatre are doing a number of reading sessions to map in with the festival. Details here on their tweet.

Channel 4 has launched a season of programmes to mark 50 years since the 1967 Sexual Offences Act (decriminalising sex between men in private over the age of 21) called 50 Shades of Gay. Take a look at the YouTube trailer. The season started with Britain’s Great Gay Buildings which you can catch up with on 4oD. Watch Monday 3 July 50 Shades of Gay at 2200 where the actor Rupert Everett looks at how the 1967 Act changed gay life in England and Wales. If you missed Britain’s Great Gay Buildings you can catch up on All 4. All 4 has also brought together the best of their LGBT programmes and films for to watch at your leisure in their Pride Collection.

We are in the process of adding titles from the Reading Agency’s Reading Well book selection into our library.

Health professionals and young people have recommended the books on the Reading Well. The books help you combat anxiety, depression, lack of confidence, stress, bullying and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

Here are the latest arrivals from the list which are on our shelves for you to borrow:

We hope you enjoyed the World Book Night Celebrations in the LRC today. We all learnt some new Scottish vocabulary and places while sipping some IRN BRU and nibbling on oatcakes and shortbread. In this to get us in the mood to read Jenny Colgan’s ‘A Very Distant Shore’ set in Scotland.

If you missed out we can still give out some of the activities and a few copies of the book ‘A Very Distant Shore’ next week. Have a lovely long weekend. Tell us what you think of the book. There are plenty more Quick Reads to borrow if you finish that one too quickly 😉

It is interesting in education (including at Hillcroft), how we push our students to read more materials online. Essentially, this is for three reasons. The first is preparing our students for university life where they will encounter even more electronic resources, the second is building up digital skills for university/working life, the third is using material 24/7 on and offsite and the fourth is sustainability (saving paper).

A short article in last week’s New Scientist by Emma Young intrigued us as although it was essentially about finding better ways to read in the digital age, it also provided some of the latest thinking about on-screen versus print reading. We’ve used the word ‘thinking’ as there is a lack of meaningful data on how and why people read on screens. The article quotes from two experts in the field of linguistics – Anne Mangen from the Reading Centre at the University of Stavanger, Norway and Naomi Baron at the Department of Language and Foreign Studies at the American University in Washington, D.C.

The keys points they were making (based on U.S. data) are:

The reading of print books is declining with a corresponding rise in ebooks although ebook sales are slowing possibly due to cost.

Anecdotal evidence suggests people find it harder to read PDFs as it is more difficult to navigate compared to print text. Contextual markers are missing on electronic pages so if a reader wanted to go back to pick up on something requiring clarification, finding it three-quarters of the way down the page is tricky.

It is probably better to read complex material in print.

Progress on a tablet (for fiction) is not the same as tactile progress through a paperback.

When using ‘find’ on an electronic device, the results are too specific so the reader does not benefit from the broader text.

There are good points with electronic devices particularly the ability to change and enlarge the font.

We’ve been adding new material to our careers collection over the past few weeks. We particularly think you’ll like this series of In a Week books by John Murray Learning.

They cover everything from writing a Curriculum Vitae (CV) and covering letter to attending an interview and doing (or even running) psychometric tests. The books break down the tasks you would need to follow to achieve your goal on a daily basis. Here are the ones we’ve just added to our shelves:

‘In search of the optimal brain diet’ an article in Scientific AmericanMind this month, lists healthy brain diets as those coming from the Mediterranean, Okinawa and Scandinavia. This is likely to be due to the frequency of fish and lack of sugar in these diets. Oily fish (like salmon and tuna) contain omega-3 fatty acids that aid neurological and mental health. The best of these fatty acids is docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) because it improves nerve to nerve communication and helps the functioning of brain cell membranes.

Besides the importance of fatty acids, increasingly scientists believe there is a link between the trillions of bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms (known as microbiota) that live on and in the human body with our health and wellbeing. The greatest concentrations of microbiota are found in the gastrointestinal tract where food is digested and absorbed. This is explored in detail in ‘Human microbiota’ in the current edition of Biological Sciences Review.

For students wishing to find out more, look up some of our nutrition resources.

The Periodic table is the way chemical elements are organised and it is controlled by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry whose work it is to standardise naming in this area of chemistry. Earlier this month, the Guardian reported the discovery of four new elements from scientists in Russia, U.S. and Japan in ‘Periodic table’s seventh row finally filled as four new elements are added‘. These are the first new elements since 2011. They belong in the seventh row of the table (super-heavy radioactive elements) and are the elements 113; 115; 117 and 118. They currently have temporary names which will be confirmed shortly.

Scientists are entitled to take five years with their demanding discoveries but let’s hope it doesn’t take book/ebook publishers as long to update this information which is essential for all science students!